


tessitura

by lady_peony



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Gen, Implied Relationships, M/M, Mountains, Post-Canon, if anything, they're on a vacation or something
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 03:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19076242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_peony/pseuds/lady_peony
Summary: "Joshua," Neku says. The pressure in the air is stretching thin, a thread pulled taut the moment before the whole cloth unravels. The mist spills forward in the clearing, thicker than it was seconds before. "Let's go."





	tessitura

"Hmm...No...Not that one...Does this green look better than the others?"

"Lemme see." Neku holds out a hand.

From the seat in front of him, a sketchbook slides over the top, Shiki's fingertips slowly releasing their grip to land it into Neku's palm. 

Neku smooths the page under his hand, looking at the swatches of green cross-hatched all over the paper. He taps his fingers over each square, all neatly numbered. "The third one meshes easily with most colors. The fifth one is nice too—it's bold. Stands out." 

"I like it too!" Rhyme says, chirping in from the front next to Shiki. "She made this bag for me outta that color!" She lifts up her bag towards the side of the aisle so that Neku could see it, the knapsack with Shiki's attentive handiwork: zippers shaped like curling leaves, embroidered patterns of birds darting between vines. 

Neku holds the sketchbook up and taps it against the seat. Shiki twists around to grab it back. The sound of flipping pages, and Shiki is spinning a colored pencil between her fingers. "Let's see...If the third one's easier to play with, maybe that would be better for the contest? Or should number five be the focal point? We are allowed to enter more than one outfit, so maybe—"

"You could also wait until we get there to try other colors," Neku says. "We still have a half hour on this train at least."

"No can do, Neku. Inspiration waits for no one!" A pencil flies up to rest over her ear, the gold color of it bright against Shiki's dark hair. 

"That is something I can entirely agree with," Joshua says from his seat, one of his elbows nearly edging over onto Neku's armrest. "It's nice to be so excited about something, hmm?"

Neku wonders if he wanted to battle with Joshua for the armrest, and decides not to push it. 

"Rhyme," Shiki says, "did Beat say he couldn't come today? It's just a little sad that he'll be missing out on the fun."

"Beat has allergies," Rhyme says. "I don't think he agrees with the mountains. Besides," she adds, just a shade softer, "I wanted to try more things on my own. I know he won't be around as much, not after his third year."

"Oh." Shiki reaches out to pat Rhyme on the shoulder. "Well me and Neku and all of us might still be around. We'll still be your friends too."

"Beat told me he's studying his literature and maths today. With someone on the student council, I think," Rhyme says. "I'm proud of him."

"We'll remember to get him a souvenir," Shiki says. "Something to cheer him on in his studying!"

"Maybe he'll need more than just one souvenir," Joshua says. It seems teasing, Neku thinks, with the unstated chords that Joshua always has in his words. But his eyes are bright, posture relaxed, and he's smiling without any edge, so Neku was content. 

The story behind Joshua showing up was a long one, over the course of the year, and then some. 

Everything that happened after the final Game. Hachiko. Self-recrimination, arguments with himself. A slow, slow climb to understanding. Passing notes to Mr. H., until Mr. H. finally decided he had enough and to quote 'chucked the whole lot of them at the Composer's head, because he was running a coffee shop, _not a damn post office_.' 

A long, heated discussion had followed. It had been somewhere high up, Neku remembers, around a rooftop. Someplace close to the sky. 

And then, this friendship. Delicate, yes, and slow-going, yes. But still, they were going somewhere with it.

The landscape outside peels away from the window, like watercolor pages melding into one another from a picture book. Neku checks his phone, and looks up again. Some time was still left before the train transfer at Takao Station. 

A stray ray of sunlight sneaks in from the window right into Neku's eyes. He winces. 

A hand reaches over and the window shade slides down with a quiet click. Relief. 

"You can rest your eyes, you know. There'll be more mountain sightseeing to do when we get there, dear."

Neku presses his fingertips lightly over his eyes, mutters, "Thanks, Joshua."

 

—

 

We should go to Mount Takao later in the day, Shiki had said. There would be less people, she had said.

Neku knows Shiki and Eri had been excited about the contest, the one requiring four outfits in the theme of four seasons. Eri had a club project that weekend she couldn't miss, so Shiki had promised to be the one to visit the mountains and fill a camera with pictures for them to pore over when she returned. 

She loved Shibuya, Shiki had said, at some point on the train. Though to be fair, sweeping natural landscapes were not admittedly, a big part of its scenery.

"And do you?" Joshua says to Neku, smiling slightly. 

"Do I what?" Neku checks the straps of his small backpack, an item from a new product line of Jupiter of Monkey.

"Love Shibuya?" 

"Do I love Shibuya?" Neku looks aside at Joshua, unaccountably feels a flush rise over skin as soon as the words leave his mouth. "It's my home. What kinda question are you asking?"

"Beat says it's not nice to tease people," Rhyme says with a grave air, turning her head around to stare at both of them.

"Apologies," Joshua says, tilts his head. "You should listen to your brother."

"What's with that thing you're wearing?" Neku waves a hand, gestures at Joshua's face.

Joshua lowers his sunglasses, glances upwards at Neku from behind the rims. "A gift. Don't say you don't remember?" 

Neku looks closer at him. White cat eye frames, swooping outwards from the bridge, the shades themselves a luminescent violet. The edges of the rims sparkle, almost too brightly, with large princess-cut rhinestones styled as faux diamonds. 

It looks ridiculous. 

It suited Joshua. 

Ah. He remembers. It must have been during those string of days with no missions, when Joshua had hinted and sighed and all but pouted that they hadn't done much shopping around Cat Street. Neku had spun on his heel then, headed into the first shop he had spotted, closed his hand on the first thing on the rack, and plunked it into Joshua's hand. Unbranded shades, so it was cheaper than anything in any of the department stores.

Shiki had sent them a message the day before to specifically wear comfortable walking clothes for the outside. Joshua hadn't changed from his typical purple button-down, or his jeans. Neku supposed the sunglasses were his one concession for the occasion. 

Joshua smiles at him, the second time, and tilts his sunglasses back up. 

Then they wait.

And wait.

And wait.

And they went—nope, they were still waiting.

"I bet I could get to the peak before all these people even get to the front of the ride," Neku groans, after they had been standing for another ten minutes, the queue in front of them still stretching on and on for what looked like fifty more people. 

The line ahead of them moves just as Neku says that, all of two steps. A tiny handful of the crowd flows into the open cable car lift, and swooshes smoothly away. Neku refrains from tapping his foot. The train ride had taken almost an hour. Was waiting for the cable car lift going to take another twenty minutes? The chair lift line didn't look as packed, but Neku wasn't sure he would be good with the heights there. 

"Is that a challenge?" Rhyme says, eyes sparkling. "Me and Shiki going this way, against you and Joshua to the top!"

"Ah, um," Neku fumbles.

Okay, he might have been Shibuya born and raised, and not a kid from the country, but he crossed all over the city on foot the majority of the time. He had a vague memory that his school had had a short springtime trip here, when he was younger. If elementary school kids came here all the time, how hard could the walk be?

"Whatever will you do, Neku?" Joshua says, light. "Rhyme has challenged you, after all."

"Right," Shiki pipes up, tapping her finger against her chin. "Rhyme and me will go with Trail 1, after the cable cars go up. Neku and Joshua will have to pick a different trail."

"Hey, come on. What will the winners get?" Neku says. 

"It'll be past the afternoon when we get up there," Rhyme says, looking at a map in her hands. "The losers will pay for lunch!"

"Yes," Shiki agrees. "That's fair."

"If it's all agreed," Joshua smiles, and helpfully nudges Neku. "You'll have to hurry and pick the alternate route."

Neku pulls apart the map that Rhyme hands to him, shrugs and points his finger at what he hopes looked like a short squiggly line. "Trail Number...4." 

"And we're off!" Shiki waves her arms like flags crossing one another, and ever so gently shoves Neku and Joshua out of the line with her hands.

"You heard the lady," Joshua says, their elbows almost bumping as they jogged towards the start of the trail, their footsteps touching down one after another in alternating rhythm. "We better stay close." 

 

—

 

Neku tilts back his head. Behind the arching fingers of gold and scarlet, the sky was now subtly silver-blue, a change from the earlier brightness of the day. Between the stands of trees, there were soft chirrups, whistling birds, leaves and moss murmuring underfoot hidden creatures.

In the city, the hard tapping of soles on cement, each going off in endless directions, would have entangled with the bells of train crossings, the veins of running electricity, the muffled thumping hearts enclosed in clubs and concert stages.

Here, the undergrowth beneath his feet eats up sound. Neku stops, watches a pair of blue butterflies cross before his face, careless and carefree. 

There must have been other travelers on this path in front of them, but he hadn't seen any sight of them so far. Just heard the odd whispers or chatter of those passing on the trails they hadn't chosen. 

"An autumn eve. See the valley mists arise, among the fir leaves." Joshua too, stops next to Neku, his sunglasses pushed back to perch above his hair. Neku recognizes the recitation. 

Neku huffs a little laugh, hands rising to cross behind his head. "Poetry, Joshua? Isn't that a little, well, old-fashioned? I wouldn't have thought you were a fan."

"Really, Neku." A hand rises to rest over Joshua's heart, the motion full of mock-offence, and he shoots Neku a sidelong look. "Not everything new is best. Some things that stay loved over time only gain in value with each year. I can appreciate that."

Neku catches Joshua's stare, holds it for a heartbeat before looking away; he stretches one arm up, fingers and palm to the sky, and continues walking. "We should get going quick, if we're going to beat Shiki and Rhyme. We walked over that bridge just a few minutes back." 

"Miyama-Bashi," Joshua says, as an absent-minded addition. "There was a sign there, in case you were so quick to—"

Joshua falls quiet.

Neku stops again. Turns. "Joshua? Wha—"

"Listen."

He does. The forest sounds rise again to his ears, the little creatures, the leaves detaching to land atop the trail, quiet as a sigh. Underneath that though.

Something like water, but not. A different sound. A song, like a strain of a lullaby, echoing across the air in the dark hours after moonrise. 

It pulls at him. Something he should remember?

_Stay on the trail, Neku._

That wasn't right. It wasn't pulling. More of a little push. Just curiosity, the kind that a large crowd attracted, more and more people weaving into it without thought, as natural as a flock of birds turning left instead of right. 

"Neku."

"Hmm."

"Where are you going?"

"Not very far." Neku looks behind him.

Joshua's eyes are narrowed, his stare dark and glacial. Something was burning behind the ice.

His hand is frozen halfway into the air, just a fingerwidth from wrapping around Neku's left elbow.

"What is—" Neku tenses. 

He had walked a lot farther than he thought he had. The smooth-packed trail was no longer under his feet. The scarlets and yellows of fallen leaves were no longer visible, muddled instead into a spread of decaying brownish green. 

It's hard to see with the sudden mist in the air, obscuring almost every inch of the clearing. 

Neku breathes in. It doesn't feel dangerous the same way the Noise had felt dangerous, a sparking of static before impact, the warning ripple in the air before they leaped. 

Careful, he reminds himself. There were other things besides Noise that could prove a danger.

He takes a step back, and another one, retreating towards Joshua.

He tries reaching out to the pins in his backpack, the ones he carries around with him, day after day. He doesn't rightly know if he could still use them. A single pulse of warmth over skin, like a glow from candle flame. Nothing else.

A touch to his arm, and Neku nearly jumps, until he looks to see Joshua at his left, his clasp careful but firm. 

"This detour was unexpected, wasn't it?" Joshua says, entirely blasé, turning around with Neku all while speaking. "We may have to add a little time to our contest to the peak. It'll just take another set of stairs back up to the path."

A high-pitched noise, like a call from a drawn out flute, drifts from behind them, until it fashions itself into a voice. "How _terribly_ rude. Guests shouldn't leave so soon, not without the proper farewells."

On Neku's neck, the cold creeping of something watching him, them, the both of them, rises.

He whirls around, his arm pulling from Joshua's grasp.

"Wouldn't you say it was more unmannerly of the host to neglect introductions?" Joshua's voice is different, no longer the laughing, flitting harmonics that Neku was used to. Indifferently relentless, a river current sweeping through all stones in its path.

The woman who was speaking raises a sleeve to cover her mouth, and giggles, though her eyes are cold. "I've decided." Her hair, the glossy black strands done in a style Neku swore he had seen in his history textbook, streams over the back of her shoulders covered with a kimono, one patterned in silver thread layered like feathers. "Guests are invited. Without an invitation, you are merely intruders. I have leave to treat you as such."

"What does that mean?" Neku says, hands curling into fists. "We didn't intrude. We'll just go if you don't want us here."

"Oh! How simple. You are amusing, more so than he is." She is there suddenly, like a flickering of wind, reaching out a hand towards Neku's cheek, nails curved dangerously like a hawk's talons. "Won't you stay? Just for some conversation, after all. Your friend may leave if he wishes."

Neku jerks his head back, away from her hand. "Thanks, but no." 

"You have no claim on him," Joshua says, glass-smooth, no weakness, no give in any syllable.

"No claim, you say? And you do?" Her eyes brighten. 

Something was odd about the eyes, Neku thinks. The whites of it are more yellow than expected, the dark pupil too narrow.

 _A ghost?_ Neku's thoughts snap back to his reading about Mount Takao, the material they had skimmed at the entrance. _A spirit?_ _If only I can do something!_

Her smile widens, her teeth seeming sharper. Her gaze flickers again towards Neku, and it hits him with an almost physical force. ""It has been so long since finding a heart this strong. And I am hungry." 

"I don't think so," Joshua says, and takes a step forward, now a closer target within reach than Neku.

"Strange little spirit," her voice drops, turns wheedling, "watcher of men with their strange metal hearts. These woods have been mine for a hundred summers and winters, and will be so for a hundred more." She laughs, the sound creeping up higher and higher to a shriek. "To me, you are but a child! You dare say this one belongs with you?"

Joshua turns his wrists, all smooth grace, his palms opening, and says, "He doesn't belong here." 

Faintly, as from a distance, a keening resonance of light, like rays breaking and coalescing through a crystal. A shiver of silk snaps open from Joshua's back, whispers into the air, though Neku sees nothing there. 

A clear signal.

_Stay. Away._

"Joshua," Neku says. The pressure in the air is stretching thin, a thread pulled taut the moment before the whole cloth unravels. The mist spills forward in the clearing, thicker than it was seconds before. "Let's go."

"You go first." Joshua glances at him, just over his shoulder touching against Neku's chest. A caesura of a smile ticks up the side of his face, a flash of teeth."This could be messy."

Neku's fingers clench, pinpricks against his palms, and he shoves once, hard, at Joshua's shoulder. " _Not a chance_."

Joshua's smile evaporates, his lips parting. Neku is close enough to see his eyes had gone just a little wider. 

"Neku," Joshua says, without any lightness. Just his name, that was all, though with the ring of a question about it. 

"Don't ignore me if I'm here right next to you! You fight, I fight. If you run, I run! Doesn't matter if it's Shibuya or here, I'm not leaving you alone!"

Joshua stares at him, silent. 

One second. Two. Three.

"Very well." He turns to stand face to face with Neku, dips his head until his lips hover a half-inch away from Neku's left ear. Strands of his hair slip down, brush slightly against Neku's jaw as he speaks. "We'll go with your first idea then, shall we?"

A shriek splits into the air and the mist screams back, echoing it. 

Neku whips his head to stare upward, sees the woman dissolving with the mist, sleeves melting into wings, feathers rising up to cover her face, mouth elongating into a sharp-looking beak, which snaps open.

She rears up, eyes glowing in the mist, and dives.

He catches Joshua's wrist in his hand, and Neku leaps, pulling Joshua back a mere second before she lands. Her attack sinks into a tree instead, slashes through the trunk like wet paper.

"Which idea was that?" Neku backtracks hastily, shouting the words above the tree thudding onto the forest ground, the harsh calling of birds rising with its fall.

"We'll run," Joshua says. A jolt of warmth curls through Neku's veins, from the hand holding onto Joshua's, and a path separates in the mist, like a tunnel, waiting just for them. 

Pulse thumping in his chest, fluttering lower to his wrist and fingers, Neku squeezes Joshua's palm once and they move, feet crunching down layers of leaves and undergrowth, running forward as one.

 

—

 

"Hey! Over here!"

Shiki is waving, face bright, from a small circle of seating in front of a noodle stall. Rhyme besides her has a bottle of juice in her hands, sipping at her drink.

The influx of soft chatter, bubbling pots and sputtering grills, and the shopkeepers' friendly greetings rise like steam into the air, surprising Neku with their normalcy.

They get closer, and Shiki frowns when she sees their faces. "Did you run into trouble?" Behind her glasses, her brow has wrinkled, concerned.

Rhyme moves over, and pats the seats next to her.

Neku, still breathing fast, bends down to sit on the bench, pulling Joshua down next to him. Gulps in another breath of air, and looks to Shiki. "You would not believe—"

"Water," Joshua croaks out, before Neku finishes speaking. Shiki grabs a bottle off the table and hands it to Joshua, who tilts back his neck to drink.

"Well," Shiki says, turning back to Neku, "Did you push yourselves too much, Neku? I didn't want either of you to get hurt!"

Neku starts again. "The thing is—"

"I tripped," Joshua says.

Neku's mouth stays open, wordless, before he closes it. "Tripped?" he says, repeating the word.

"Why, yes," Joshua says, shrugs. "I thought I saw a ghost in the middle of the woods, after all. Luckily, Neku was enough of a gentleman to make sure not to lose me."

A small bubble of laughter from Rhyme, her bell necklace chiming with it. "A ghost? That sounds more exciting than what Shiki and I saw. You got scared?"

Shiki smiles at that, expression relieved. "Even if you both lost our race, at least we're all here now. Let's get something to eat, and I can show you our pictures!"

Neku shoots a look at Joshua as their noodle bowls come out minutes later. Joshua merely smiles back as Shiki and Rhyme chatter at them about the cable car ride, and the snacks in their bags that they planned to bring back for Beat and Eri.

 

—

 

"So, Joshua. What was that all about?" Neku nudges an elbow against Joshua, who again, was sitting next to him.

The train runs on and on beneath their feet, the humming of it a calming backdrop. Behind them, Shiki and Rhyme are sleeping, a cardigan from Shiki rolled behind Rhyme's head.

"Whatever _could_ you be referring to, Neku?" Joshua says, tips his head to rest against the side of his left hand, eyelids half-lowered.

"You know," Neku says, gestures into the air. "At lunch."

"Ah. You noticed?"

Neku runs a hand through his hair, grimaces at the sweat that flattens it against his forehead. "Yes, I did. Was there any reason that I couldn't tell them what we ran into? Whatever kind of monster-bird it was?"

Joshua makes a thoughtful noise, something like a sigh. "Tell me dear, what do you suppose Daisukenojo would say if he had heard of it?"

"Wait, if he had—" Neku blinks. "That there was a monster-bird somewhere on the mountain? Where we. Where Rhyme visited." He stops. 

He could imagine very well what Beat would say.

"There it is." Joshua nods once, and slouches down just a bit into his seat.

"You've become more considerate."

Neku hadn't thought about saying that last part, at least not aloud. The words had just spilled out, unconsciously. 

"Why, _Neku_." Some delight there, the tone floating upwards at the end of the name from Joshua's tongue. "Was that almost a compliment?"

"It was," Neku says. "It's a thing people sometimes say to each other, you know." Looking at the side of Joshua's face, Neku leans slightly toward him, flicks at a pale wave of hair clinging to a cheek. Joshua, who had his mouth open, undoubtedly about to reply with something clever, stills.

"Looks like we'll go shopping another time, when we get back," Neku says, withdrawing his hand, and settles back into his seat.

"And why is that?" Joshua says.

"You dropped it in the mountains," Neku answers, grumbling. "That thing you called sunglasses that you made me buy. Just think of it as a thank you, okay?"

"If you insist. I can't disappoint you, you know."

"Really. I'm not going to count on that," Neku says dryly, lifting an eyebrow, and Joshua laughs, suggests that this time, they should get matching pairs.

**Author's Note:**

> \+ does this include any information from New Day content at all?? not a bit!! (just imagine that it's floating around there, at some point in a bucket distinct from the happenings of this)  
> \+ fell into this fandom via a detour from finding out what was Hip and Happening with kingdom hearts as you do  
> \+ apologies to Beat for not finding a good way to include him here (he got a good score the next week?? on his test?? if that should help)  
> \+ hey what's a fun idea to do with a game that takes place ENTIRELy IN A CITY?? dump the characters into the woods! maybe they'll get some fresh air. see a totoro :))  
> +the poem joshua quotes [can be read here](http://jti.lib.virginia.edu/japanese/hyakunin/noJIS/hyaku87.html)


End file.
